I ask because if you look at the map, the various regions appear to be, and feel like, they are vast, and far away from each other. Yet in most cases, driving from one locale to another only takes a minute or two. And the game isn't cheating and compressing physical space, because all that driving is happening in real time, and your car really is covering all those simulated miles of terrain.

So how 'bout it? Are we actually experiencing life in a very small neighborhood that only seems vast because travel in the post-apocalypse world is very hard?

Size is distorted in games... for instance, GTA V covers 49 square miles apparently, and that feels gigantic. Mad Max is probably not that large (although I've seen articles saying otherwise), and feels quicker to traverse as the top speed is quite high, there is no traffic and it the roads are entirely rural so are quite straight.